I read an interesting head turning memo from the CEO of Shopify today, where he is making a company-wide policy change. Now his teams must demonstrate why AI cannot perform a particular job before anyone is permitted to ask for a new hire / resource. Wow – this has turned the human hiring process on its head. It also advances the notion that AI agents will help companies (e.g. Shopify) maintain potentially ever-reducing human workforces.

In the memo, he states 1. Using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify 2. AI must be part of software development projects prototyping 3. AI usage and capability will be part of everyone’s performance and peer reviews 4. Everyone must share learnings of AI progress and findings etc. and lastly 5. As I said above, teams must show that AI cannot do the job before a human can ask for a new hire/resources. It will be really interesting when autonomous AI agents are already part of a team that requires additional human resources.

If there ever was a strong front running position to push for the on-boarding of agentic AI across a corporation – this, is it! Such a policy is sure to attract a ton of controversy, particularly given the universal fear about AI’s impact on jobs - United Nations’ Trade and Development org. estimates that AI I projected to reach $4.8trillion by 2033 on the one hand while on the other hand they predict that up to 40% of global jobs will be impacted.

Time to buckle up and start identifying areas of your business where you can best use agents for productivity and efficiency, whether costs savings or faster growth (or both), start deploying agents asap and dip your toe in the AI water.

Billy Kelly